Trail Blazers Blog

Kay Bailey Hutchison doesn’t seem to like Rick Perry very much

Kay Bailey Hutchison had nothing good to say about Rick Perry on MSNBC today where she gave her thoughts as she prepares to leave the Senate. It’s clear she’s still stinging from Perry’s full-bore attack on her as a free-spending moderate. She repeated several times that she’s a conservative, the kind that couldn’t get elected in places like New England. Hutchison said her vote for the Bush administration’s financial bailout was the right thing to do – even though Perry used it as a bludgeon in their GOP primary race two years ago. Hutchison challenged Perry for the nomination for governor in 2010, and Perry went to the mattresses – labeling her part of a spendthrift Washington culture in which an aide dubbed her “Kay Bailout” and the Perry camp chided her not toeing the tea party line.

Hutchison is retiring from the Senate after this year. In an exit interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Hutchison said: “We needed to help the banks in a way that would not allow the whole world’s economy to collapse.” She said President George W. Bush called her personally to help save the economy. She suggested Perry’s decision to use that against her was unfair. “Especially in Texas, when George Bush asks you to vote for something and you do, and then your governor attacks you for it, that’s pretty tough.” As she has said before, Hutchison said she wasn’t happy with the way the bank bailout was administered, but didn’t back away from the vote itself. (The great Mark Dallas Loeffler poster mashup)

She lamented the growing political divisions that have run counter to cooperation and compromise. “There is a divide on people who want to achieve something — as Ronald Reagan said, ‘I’d rather have half a loaf than no loaf’ — and people who just want to blow things up.” As for the uncompromising demand for deep budget cuts and dwindling government, she said: “Do you really want to not have bridges and the highways that keep commerce moving?” Perry allies, going full tea party, skewered Hutchison as a Republican in name only (RINO). “In my opinion, there’s no such thing as a RINO. Noting makes me madder than a Republican who makes fun of someone who’s not exactly the way they are. If someone’s a Republican, they should be welcome in the Republican Party.”

Hutchison was asked why a woman hasn’t been elected president yet. Todd asked whether running for the White House as a governor offers certain advantanges. “In my opinion, governors don’t make the best presidents. And that’s because they don’t have the foreign policy experience and they need to learn on the job,” she said. Hutchison praised Mitt Romney’s potential as a president because of his business experience, not his years as governor. As for Perry, who’s been in elective office a quarter century including a decade as governor, he doesn’t appear to pass the Hutchison test.